No man can be either a patriot or a consistent Christian on an empty stomach—he's merely a savage animal, a dangerous beast. You must get a square meal inside of a man and a clean shirt outside of him before he's fit subject for saving grace. You must give him a bath before he's worth baptizing. And when you get him clean and well clothed, fed and housed as a reward of his own honest industry, he's not far from the Kingdom of God. But if you want to degrade a people beyond redemption; if you want to transform them into contemptible peons and whining hypocrites who encumber the earth like so much unclean vermin, educate them to feed on the crumbs from Dives' banquet-board and accept his cast-off clothing with obsequious thankfulness.
The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and the impoverishment of the common people until it was the bread of charity or the blood of the revolution, has ever been the herald of moral decay and of national death. So passed the glory of Greece and the grandeur of Rome, and, if we may judge the future by the past, so will perish the greatest republic that ever gleamed like a priceless jewel on the skeleton hand of Time. Self-interest, humanity, patriotism, religion itself, admonish us to weigh well the problem of the hour—a problem born of human progress, forced upon us by the mighty revolution wrought in the industrial world by the giant Steam—and that problem is: Shall the average American Citizen be a Slave or a Sovereign?
Don't imagine for a moment that I'm an anarchist— that I'm going to wind up this seance by unfurling the red flag and throwing a hatful of bombs. I admit that I haven't much respect for law—there's so much of it that when I come to spread my respect over the entire lot it's about as thin as one of Sam Jones's sermons. Still, I don't believe in strikes, and riots and bloodshed. I'm for peace —peace in its most virulent form. I've had a sneaking respect for Cleveland ever since he employed a substitute to put a kibosh on the Southern Confederacy while he remained at home to play pinochle with the pretty girls. He may not be much of a statesman in time of peace, but there's no picnic ants on his judgment in time of war.
It is time that capital and labor realized that their interests are really commutual, as interdependent as the brain and the body; time they ceased their fratricidal strife and, uniting their mighty forces under the flag of Progress, completed the conquest of the world and doomed Poverty, Ignorance and Vice—hell's great triumvirate—to banishment eternal. Unless labor is employed, capital cannot increase—it can only concentrate. Unless property rights are held inviolable and capital thereby encouraged to high enterprise, labor is left without a lever with which to lift itself to perfect life and must sink back to barbarism.
It is time that American citizens of alleged intelligence ceased trailing blindly in the wake of partisan band- wagons and began to seriously consider the public welfare —time they realized that the people were not made for parties, but parties for the people, and refuse to sacrifice their patriotism on the unclean altar of partisan slavery. Blind obedience to party fiat; the division of the people of one great political family into hostile camps; subjection of the public interest to partisan advantage; placing the badge of party servitude above the crown of American sovereignty—the ridiculous oriflamme of foolish division above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise of everlasting unity—have brought the first nation of all world to the very brink of destruction.
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It is difficult for people here in Texas to understand the industrial condition of the American nation today; to appreciate the dangers upon which it is drifting. We are too apt to imagine everybody as prosperous and conservative as ourselves; or if not so, it's because they do not vote the Democratic ticket—that panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to. Here in Texas we have hung our second providence on the Democratic party—it has become a religion with us. If a man is orthodox in his political faith all things are forgiven him; but if there's any doubt about his Democracy we are inclined to regard him as an alien, if not an anarchist. Most of us enjoy the shadow of our own vine and fig tree—which it is impossible to mortgage. We feed three times a day, have a cocktail every morning, a clean shirt occasionally and even when cotton goes so low it doesn't pay for the paris-green to poison the worms, we blame it on the Lord instead of on our political leaders. But it's different in other sections of the Union.
America contains more than a million as desperate men as ever danced the Carmagnole or shrieked with brutal joy when the blood of French aristocrats reddened the guillotine. The dark alleys and unclean dives of our great cities are crowded with dangerous sans-culotte, and our highways with hungry men eager for bread—though the world blaze for it. Pauperism is rampant, the criminal classes increasing and everywhere the serpent of Socialism is leaving it's empoisoned slime. Suppose that these desperate elements find a determined leader—a modern Marat, who will make the most of his opportunities for evil: how many of that vast contingent now clinging with feeble grasp to the rotten skirts of a doubtful respectability, would be swept into the seething vortex of unbridled villainy? Note the failure of public officials to protect corporate property; the necessity of calling for federal bayonets and batteries to suppress labor riots; the dangerous unrest of the common people; the sympathy of the farmer—that Atlas upon whose broad shoulders rests our political and industrial world—with every quasi-military organization that throws down the gage of battle to the powers that be, then tell me, if you can, where Dives may look for defenders should the rabble rise in its wrath, the bullet supplant the ballot in the irrepressible conflict between the Cormorant and the Commune! And what are we doing to avert the danger? Distributing a little dole and preaching patience to starving people; quarreling about the advisability of "counting a quorum" or coining a little silver seigniorage; wrangling over the "rights" of a mid-Pacific prostitute to rule Celts and Saxons, and trying to so "reform" the tariff that it will yield more revenue with less taxation! We are bowing down before various pie-hunting political gods and electing men to Congress who couldn't tell the Federal Constitution from Calvin's Confession of Faith. We are sending street- corner economists to state and national conventions to evolve from their innate ignorance and gild with their supernal gall political platforms which we are pledged beforehand to accept as the essence of all worldly wisdom. Our patriotism has been supplanted by partisanship, and now all are for a party and none are for the state. On July 4 we shout for the old flag and all the rest of the year we clamor for an appropriation. The man who is kicked by a nightmare while dreaming of the draft demands a pension and every burning patriot wants an office. And while our ship of state is threading with unsteady course the stormy straits between the Scylla of Greed and the Charybdis of Need; its canvas torn by contending winds; its decks swept by angry waves, we boast of the strength of our "free institutions"—as though Republics had never fallen nor revolutions erased from the map of the world proud Empires that imagined themselves immortal.
But before God I do believe this selfish and unpatriotic age will pass, as passed the age of brutish ignorance, as passed the age of tyranny. I believe the day will come— oh blessed dawn!—when the angel of Intellect will banish the devil of Demagogy; when Americans will be in spirit and in truth a band of brothers, the wrongs of one the concern of all; when labor will no longer fear the Cormorant nor capital the Commune—when all men will be equal before the law wherever falls the shadow of our flag.
* * * RAINBOW-CHASERS.